Rick Carlisle talks with ESPN's Tim Legler about last season's championship run and the state of the Pacers entering 2025-26.
INDIANAPOLIS — What transpired at Gainbridge Fieldhouse last season, on the court and through the building, was a level of play and enthusiasm last savored in the days of Paul George, David West and Roy Hibbert.
The Indiana Pacers built on their trip to the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals by pushing to the 2025 NBA Finals. Coach Rick Carlisle and his team fended off a 3-2 deficit to Oklahoma City in their Fieldhouse farewell and forced Game 7 before losing the series and star guard Tyrese Haliburton to a ruptured Achilles tendon in the first quarter.
It was a coin flip between bad and worse.
“Building on” last season seems a bridge too far for the Pacers in 2025-26. Haliburton, hitting his prime after two All-Star and two All-NBA selections, will miss the entire season. Also, center Myles Turner – a fixture since he arrived as a 19-year-old lottery pick in 2015 – finally one-upped years of trade rumors by “trading himself” as a free agent, signing with the rival Milwaukee Bucks.
Rarely has a Finals team returned with such a dampened outlook.
Anything approaching the Pacers’ 50-32 record from last season would qualify as a moral victory, yet the roster still is stocked with players – All-Star Pascal Siakam, Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, T.J. McConnell, Obi Toppin – whose ambitions are loftier than that. Meanwhile, the calendar is relentless: Indiana opens its season against the reigning champion Thunder, back at the Fieldhouse, in a sorta-kinda Finals rematch (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).
Carlisle talked briefly with NBA.com at the National Basketball Coaches Association last month about making this season more than a dreary off-Broadway production of “Waiting for Hali.”
NBA.com: With Haliburton out and Turner gone, how do you balance reality and the desire to keep expectations high?
Rick Carlisle: We’ve established standards, and we know this will be a season with some unique challenges. We’re missing an All-NBA player, a great playmaker and scorer. But there are opportunities for other guys. And from a style standpoint, we’re going to have to figure out very quickly what style is best for this group.
We still want to play hard, fast, smart. But our makeup is going to be different.
The transition you made to great results heading into last season, sacrificing a bit offensively to be more conscientious defensively, do you need to dial that up even more now?
Defense is something that can be a constant. Shot-making can come and go, even for the best shooting teams. Defensive consistency can be there on a night-to-night basis. With physicality, commitment and togetherness. So this year, we’re going to look to our defense even more.
Not that Andrew Nembhard needs to “step up” after what he demonstrated in the playoffs last spring, but now taking the role Tyrese had, what changes for him?
Andrew’s unique because he’s a natural point guard who can play the 2 beside a guy like Tyrese. He can guard the best ball handler, and he can make plays with the ball. With him bumping over to the 1 and not having Tyrese, we go from two ball handlers and playmakers to just one. That’s going to be an adjustment.
Who else can pick up that slack?
I’ve always looked at Pascal [Siakam] as a ball handler and a playmaker, so if you count him we’re going from three to two. We’re going to have to figure it out.
Looking up front, with Turner leaving and Thomas Bryant gone too, how do you try to plug that hole?
It’s going to have to be a strength-in-numbers thing somehow. We had four centers come to training camp. Isaiah Jackson and James Wiseman are both back from injuries last year. Tony Bradley is back. And we traded for Jay Huff. All of these guys bring a unique element to the mix. I’ve had seasons where I’ve played three centers consistently. In 2013-14 [in Dallas] we had Sam Dalembert, DeJuan Blair and Brandan Wright, and all three of them played just about every game during the season.
Will their roles be situational? Dictated by foul trouble?
Just stylistically, there were certain things each of them did that we needed night to night. And they were professional enough that they were able to handle minutes that would change by the game.
As this season begins, we hear so much swooning over how tough the Western Conference will be. What is your take on the East?
To me, both conferences are tough. I don’t like sweeping, big-picture statements about anything, because a lot of things are in flux in this business. We open our season, our home opener, against OKC – there’s nothing easy about that. And a lot of the Eastern Conference teams, people have looked at and lowered expectations, but I believe we’re all going to be a lot better than that.
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
